Saving the safety nets

Wednesday

May 9, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 9, 2007 at 9:12 AM

If you visit the Barnstable County Department of Human Services website, there’s a motto at the top of the page that contains the Advisory Council’s priority programs. It reads: Barnstable County – The County That Cares.Make that: Tries to Care.

If you visit the Barnstable County Department of Human Services website, there’s a motto at the top of the page that contains the Advisory Council’s priority programs. It reads: Barnstable County – The County That Cares.Make that: Tries to Care.Our county does plenty of great things for its citizens and our commissioners and Assembly of Delegates representatives are top-notch, but as the recent budget dilemma over human services funding shows, the means to the end isn’t always on target.For the coming fiscal year, the county’s human services budget for outreach and assistance programs was a large goose egg. Typically, it’s in the $400,000 range. The vast majority of the money comes through fees paid through the County Registrar of Deeds. But with the real estate slump, there are far fewer dollars available.When delegates met last week to adopt the budget, they wisely amended it to include reserve funds -- $155,000 -- so that at least some programs could be supported. These included a range of assistance tools for homeless people and senior citizens. But many programs are going unfunded. For example, there’s no money for substance abuse prevention, no money for childcare programs, no money for the uninsured or under-insured, and no money for social programs such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Diploma Plus (a drop-out prevention plan) or High Flight (an initiative that identifies at-risk elementary school students.) There’s also no money to fund a program that seeks to enable visually-impaired seniors to remain living at home.Clearly, the revenue stream has got to be changed so that these and other worthy endeavors can be funded in the future.According to Ray Gottwald, the Harwich representative now serving as deputy speaker in the Assembly, officials will soon form a task force to explore the funding mechanism and hopefully find alternatives to depending on the registry fees. We applaud that idea, which is probably overdue, given that the real estate debacle has been brewing for some time.If human services are fully funded, that motto – “the county that cares” -- will again ring true.Meanwhile, the county commissioners are set to vote on the budget today. The total budget is $25 million.